It's a new year, new gym here in the Consumer of None household. Welcome to our oasis, the world's smallest gym. I'd been going to our local city-run gym all last year. I have a health-spending account through my work, so the cost to me was minimal, and the gym was an extremely nice, brand new facility a 10-minute walk from our place. This was awesome, but at the end of the day, I found myself dreading going, because:
I'd also been wanting to do workouts with my husband, but since he doesn't have a health-spending account, that would have cost $624/year just for his membership alone, and that's cheaper than your standard private gym (Canada is an expensive country). We already have an iron gym (a pullup bar that fits over a doorway). We'd both been enjoying that a lot (my goal for this year is to do an unassisted pullup!) but noticed that we didn't have a good way to build leg strength at home. After taking some measurements, we realized we could fit a barbell in our storage room with just enough room to do squats. We did some research and found a 7 foot (olympic) barbell on amazon for 60 bucks on sale (it's now $167). This was cheaper than any used options on Kijiji (Craigslist for the 'mericans among us). We debated about whether or not to buy the weights used. We could have probably bought a set of used weights for 150-200 bucks, but we had two issues:
We specifically wanted rubber-plated because we have a very small space and don't have a basement to put the equipment in. So, we wanted something that would be least likely to hurt us or our floor/walls if accidentally dropped (although we don't intend on dropping the weights on the floor during workouts). Our compromise was to buy this set from Costco. At $430 CAD these are fucking expensive, but:
If you don't have a health spending account, this would definitely be a lot to spend (we also need clips, which cost about $15 on amazon, so just over $500 total). Not to mention we don't have room for a squat rack (we can still do deadlifts and place the bar on our backs manually at a lower weight), which would add another $100 give-or-take. However, this will provide a 24/hour, free workout facility to both of us, forever, at less than the cost of one year's gym membership for one person. The biggest benefit we've seen so far is the ability to do mini workouts. Unlike going to the gym, where you have to psyche yourself up to spend at least 45 minutes working out to justify the time it takes to get there, you can easily do a couple pull-ups or squats when the mood strikes. The funny thing is, this means I work out more than I did before, even though I'm only spending maybe 10 minutes/day on average. Add to that control over the music and not having to deal with anyone else's annoying noises or germs on the bar, and I've signed up for a lifetime membership.
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